In Germany and Austria you can have your residence censored by law if you wish. It's just fill in a form I believe and Google have to go through and blur out your entire property from all angles. It was a massive pain when they first started it up in the cities so I think they just decided to not do the rest of the country like in France or UK or wherever. Go through Berlin on Google Street view and so many houses and buildings are blurred out. Imagine having to do that by hand every time a request came through

Sorry, I should have clarified that the focus was "Central Europe." I actually tried zooming out further but the map was less interesting because you lose some details, like the presence of streetview in major German and Austrian cities

Depending on the country, but reasonably quickly in my opinion. In the Netherlands it's once every two to three years for all the streets. In countries like Russia or other remote locations it will be longer.